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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26619583">no grave</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative'>OccasionallyCreative</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>And gets it from good boy Ben Solo, Character Study, F/M, Happy Ending, Ocean, POV Rey (Star Wars), Reunion Sex, Reunions, Rey Needs A Hug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:08:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,268</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26619583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It is coming up to the end of summer when there is a knock on her door.</p><p>Her hair is damp from the waters, her skin is soft, and her clothes are baggy.</p><p>She opens the door.</p><p>“Skywalker, huh?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>144</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>To Rapture the Earth and the Seas: the 2020 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>no grave</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I picked the theme of "Oceans" for this year's Anthology, and used it to explore Rey's mindset post-TRoS... with a few fix-its here and there, because I just couldn't help it 😂</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>She makes her home here, in a stone-walled cottage on the coast of an ocean planet that feels a life away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In all that time spent travelling, that’s what she has been searching for: a life away from the thrum of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Falcon</span>
  </em>
  <span>’s engine (so persistent she even hears it in her dreams), from the busy, from the thoughts of everyone around her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even without the Force, she knows what they would think. They hide it well, but she’s caught their side glances and the silences in between their sentences, how they use coded language when they speak to each other; like she’s a ghost in the room because they just… don’t know how to talk to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After all, how do you ask someone what it feels like to miss one half of their soul?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How do you behave when someone you love tells you that when they wake up in the morning, the first thing they feel is an infinite quiet?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One part of her is human; the other half is a fissure, a burned-out star.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finn has come the closest to understanding. He and Rose don’t share a dyad, a bond seen once every few hundred generations, but the time they spent apart in the last part of the war was a fracture that has cut him deep. In Rey, he sees something similar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The day of her departure, almost a month after Exegol, she tells Finn to let himself love Rose with his whole being.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t waste a moment,” she says with a smile as they hug farewell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now, after months following wherever the stars have decided to take her, she lands here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The planet is dark ocean waves, sprinkled with islands of green, but it isn’t like Ahch-To. That place was a pilgrimage or an escape (depending on the person). This planet is thriving with cultures that differ from island to island. Some creatures live on the waves, born floating and only occasionally stepping on dry land. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cottage she chooses has been long abandoned, a thin layer of dust covering the previous occupant’s sparse belongings. Rey picks her way through them on her first day, choosing which is valuable, which should be just thrown into storage. Nets and parts that in another life made up a utility trawler. Outside, a short walk into the wind, the rubble of an old lighthouse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Explains the isolation,” Rey mutters to herself as she picks up stones. It’s a force of habit to scavenge now more than it ever was a way of life. Sometimes the habit is rewarded. Forgotten credits, a part that’ll keep Artoo going another day. But not this time. Today it’s just stones and a bitter wind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Walking back to the cottage, her path underfoot unsteady due to the soft sand, she’s met at the door by a grumpy-looking Chadra-Fan. He wore traveller’s clothes, a utility belt around his waist. Sighing, the Chadra-Fan brushed sand from its fur, glaring past Rey at the blue ocean.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Welcome to Selonia,” they mutter, shifting their weight quickly from foot to foot. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Skittish</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Rey thought. “I take it you want this cottage.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have credits,” Rey says. The Chadra-Fan nods, still watching the ocean with a suspicious eye. Digging into her satchel, she brings out two handfuls. They’re standard issue, remnants of the Republic. Money is confusing, shifting from planet to planet, culture to culture, but the Chadra-Fan is satisfied. With a nod, they hurry away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey pushes open the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first room is the kitchen. It’s a mix of old tech and new, but even the new stuff is three, four years out of date. That’s her comfort zone, and with it she knows she’ll eventually make good enough meals that will keep her belly full. It makes her smile to herself that she doesn’t have to fight, isn’t challenged, for any of this. She can fall asleep with these worthless possessions. She can sleep, certain of the fact that it will all be here in the morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She dumps her satchel on the kitchen counter. The cottage is on the coast, close to the sand. The dark waves of the planet lap against the long stretch of crimson red sand. Through gaps in the stones, she hears the winds passing in a comforting hum.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Over the next few days, she ekes out her portions from her travel pack while she sets to her tasks, cleaning and hauling, sorting and storing. The third day, she loses her rhythm and drops a heavy part on her foot in the middle of the night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kriff,” she pants, wincing, hopping into the kitchen and sitting in one of the chairs. She peels off her shoes. The pain is sharp, but short. No dressings, no bacta needed. Readying herself, she piles the parts and the nets worth something into the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Falcon</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, she pulls it into the air. It’ll be a quick flight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Landspeeder,” she says to herself. If she gets enough credits for the parts and the nets, she might be able to buy one. “Among other things,” she mutters. The list is rolling through her head all the way towards town.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The market in town, she finds, is a series of interweaving streets and narrow alleyways, dotted with stores populated with shopkeeper droids happy to show you the latest imports, and outside, rudimentary stalls hosted by vendors selling their locally-made wares. It isn’t like Niima Outpost, where Plutt sits at his stall like a king at court while scavengers beg for scraps, hoping that their stolen parts are enough. He still tells his lies about prices, about other things too, with only his books revealing the truth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At this market, she sells the trawler parts to a Carthasian for a healthy amount of credits that feel heavy in her satchel. Later, she haggles with a younger fisherman, just starting out, about the price of the nets. (He took them only after she dropped the price to 20 credits for the lot.) Afterwards, she buys ingredients for cooking and tea for drinking. She buys utensils and supplies next, scrolling through the list on her datapad as she talks with a shopkeeper droid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strolling down a narrow alley, credits still heavy, she buys trinkets that catch her eye. A slightly cracked mirror going cheap. A plant with spiked leaves that won’t need much watering, a blanket with a thick weave that will keep the eventual cold at bay. A doll that doesn’t necessarily mean much by sight, but it leads the way into memories of Jakku and its sandstorms; how she would cling to the pilot she’d made from straw when the loneliness got too much, when she just wanted to be like other children with toys that she saw at Niima Outpost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She buys herself clothes too. She long ago rid herself of the white robes she’d worn to Exegol, and she’s learning the art of quiet indulgence. A few sweets here, a sweater there. At first, after abandoning the white robes, she’d put on a green sweater and leggings, her boots the only thing she kept. But with every small gift to herself, a new identity bloomed. She wore darker clothes, and kept her hair loose. Easy to dress made it easier to wake. Easier to move on when she stayed too long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In darker clothes, with her saber tucked in her satchel, when asked for her name by the vendors, she smiles easier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rey,” she says. “Rey Niima.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Live peacefully</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” replied the vendor in her own language, her pale skin purpled by veins on the back of her hands. Rey’s smile fades a little. She turns away, heading towards her speeder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d left Tatooine soon after burying the sabers, knowing she would leave behind whispers of the return of Skywalker. That mysterious figure who left as a boy and returned to their sands as a Jedi. Perhaps they think she’s Luke’s daughter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a thought that does make her laugh, but the laughter leaves a bitter aftertaste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luke and Leia have come to her since the burial. It’s always ephemeral, passing swiftly. They say nothing about the present. Instead, in her dreams, she just lives the times she knew them. The touch of Leia’s hand on hers in the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Falcon</span>
  </em>
  <span> after Crait; only now Leia’s skin is framed by a peaceful blue. Surrounded by echoes of Ahch-To’s driving rain, she battles Luke again, but every hit of her staff passes through his skin and when he falls, he fades, and she wakes.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the end, it’s easy to return a presence to this abandoned cottage. It’s roomy enough for one, perfect for two. One day, her thoughts wander while she cleans the floor. Another day, she notes that Ben would have to duck slightly to walk through from the bedroom to the kitchen, and smiles thinking about how his feet would dangle over the edge of the double bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t think of it</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she scolds herself then.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t be stupid,” she says aloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wets her brush and slaps it on the kitchen tiles, scrubbing the slate of its history. She cleans too, the counters and the cookers, dots the area with her supplies. Throws the blanket over the seating that stands at the left side of the bed, along with an old holotable. Sets the plant on the windowsill that lets the sun in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As the winter gets closer, and the winds grow harsher, she closes the windows and the shutters. Puts the plant in a safe place at her bedside, on top of the Jedi texts. (It’s not like Luke took great care of them.) She wraps herself in her blanket and watches holodramas until the winds die down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Summer comes. She packs away her blanket and holos, moves the plant back into place by the window. When she goes into town, the market teems with life, as if the slow months of winter have never been there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In summer, the market breathes with life once again. Rey revels in it, cramming street food into her mouth and wiping her greasy fingers on rough napkins. Stops at a vendor selling clothing fit for the hotter temperatures.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s deciding between two different shirts, when she hears a conversation, not more than two metres from her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Had to stop at that awful place on the way here,” sighed a Zeltron to their companion, a male Human who couldn’t keep his eyes off the Zeltron’s shocking blue hair. “Tatooine has the worst prices for fuel, but at least you get a few fun stories while you’re there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey freezes, her finger and thumb clutching the thin fabric of the shirt. It’s a casual conversation, happening not more than two metres from her. Her shoulders tense, her fingers tremble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really?” The male wrenches his gaze away from the Zeltron, hyper-focusing on the street food stall in front of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. This time, right, apparently Skywalker’s back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>The</span>
  </em>
  <span> Luke Skywalker?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Zeltron chatters carelessly while Rey’s heart hammers against her chest. “Someone calling themselves Skywalker. But apparently there’s always some idiot claiming themselves to be a Skywalker wandering around Tatooine. The guy I heard the story from says they’re usually fans who’ve read too much of the Holonet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey turns away. Hurrying to the Falcon, she only breathes again as the cottage hoves into view, and beyond that, the ocean.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ocean itself is not the blue waters of Ahch-To. Instead the ocean here is cool and clear with a calm tide. Stepping out of the Falcon, Rey approaches the edge where the gentle tide laps against the shore. She shuffles forwards, pulling up her trouser legs. She lets the water pool around her ankles. She wiggles her toes, watching how the sand moves with her feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Rey Skywalker</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She’d proudly proclaimed that in a desperate attempt to explain everything that had passed in the last few hours to a stranger. And here, she learns that her announcement has been dismissed as the ramblings of an overzealous devotee.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Force works in mysterious ways.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After that, she’d returned to the Resistance, only to find that the ache for a family, a name, had been replaced by another ache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An ache to merely... get away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A life away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows why. If she’s a life away from the conflict, the hurt it had brought might not follow her.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>She forms a habit. Every day in summer, an hour after the sun has set and the moon has risen, she goes to the shore’s edge and dips her toes into the calm waters. They’re black in the moonlight and the red sands burgundy. She digs her toes in so she has a grip as she wades. She keeps moving until the waters touch the line of her jaw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She ducks her head under the water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The world is far away here. Silent. Unseen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hair surrounds her like vines, caressing her cheeks, wrapping around her neck before letting go, drifting into the current.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pushes her legs up, her arms forward, breaks the surface with a gasp and the world rushes in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It could be an hour she spends there; perhaps only a minute. But it’s enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sleeps without dreams.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is enough because she wakes the next day and, for a moment, the infinite silence isn’t her companion. It is enough because disappearing, travelling, wasn’t enough. The ache has been replaced again, but by an ache that’s been with her, in her heart, since Exegol.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With every time she sinks her head under that water, the pain persists a little less. She feels just a touch more whole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is coming up to the end of summer when there is a knock on her door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hair is damp from the waters, her skin is soft, and her clothes are baggy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She opens the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Skywalker, huh?”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Slap him for leaving you.</span>
  </em>
  <span> That’s her first thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Kiss him for coming back because you really have missed those lips, stars, his eyes are handsome.</span>
  </em>
  <span> That’s her second.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a strange mishmash of the two as she grabs him by his neck, his collar, wrenches him down to clash her lips to his. There’s evidently no confusion on his part for he wraps her in his arms and pins her to the wall, his hands lifting her thighs so she can wrap her legs around his waist. He sinks his fingers into her hair, uncaring that it’s wet and he’s getting flecks of water on the high of his cheek, on his lips as he runs his hands through the strands, over her shoulders, down her back—just everywhere. He is everywhere and he’s here and he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ben</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo Ren is dead but Ben Solo is so alive and so warm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their kiss is mingled breaths and the taste of salt water. She presses her hand to his heart, deepening their embrace with every beat she feels.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop, stop,” she finds herself saying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben steps back from her. Part of her screams at common sense. Since she was small, she’s carved out a life for herself through restraint. If she ever followed the instinct to leave Jakku’s sands, she might have missed two people making their overdue return. It was a pain deep enough to keep her in her routine of marking each day on the walls of her shelter, of portions and parts. And now that he’s here, she wants him both and to hold onto that crutch she knows so well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her soul is whole, sound has rushed back into her world so why can’t she just let go?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anger is one answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You must be hungry,” she says, speaking into the silence between them. She leads the way into the kitchen, and he has to duck under the doorway to enter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can’t stop taking little glances at him, sitting at the scratched table with his ankles crossed and knees spread. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At one point, his eyes lock with hers. They share a stupid, dazed smile. It’s odd, a head-spinning good kind of odd, that Ben Solo’s absence, such a weight on her being all this time, has been pushed to the side while she studies the other half of her soul.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her pressing questions on how he got off Ahch-To and got to her here, fades slowly as she watches him. Studies him. She was so quick to embrace him that she didn’t give herself time to savour him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hair is longer and darker than she remembers it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He still has a tear in his sweater—dark grey this time, the black one left in the rubble when she couldn’t quite believe he’d gone. This time though, it’s at the collar where she pulled him close. He smirks but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. Any amusement he feels, that’s pushed out. She looks into his eyes and all she can see is relief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She returns to the arduous task of cutting two slices of her baked bread. She heats up a portion of her stew from last night. Her hands tremble when she puts the warm bowl on a dish. Bowl clatters against plate. She tries to place the metal spoon in the bowl gently, but instead it hurriedly drops into the stew, splashing a small stain onto her thumb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She licks it off as she places the bowl and the bread in front of Ben.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He eats like a man starved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside, the ocean waves roll and crash in a measured rhythm. Rey brews some tea. They fill the silence.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>It is when his long fingers have folded up a piece of her bread to sop up the last pieces of her stew that the silence breaks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I woke up, I don’t know how many days later. It could’ve been weeks.” Taking a breath, letting it out, gaining courage, he continues. “I woke up on Ahch-To, which was… weird.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes a sip of her drink. It’s not her favourite of Gatalean teas, but it’s sweet enough and the cup warms her palms while the wind whistles outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The caretakers found me,” Ben says as she takes another sip and she struggles not to laugh, imagining those nuns finding another confused, lonely Force user on their island. “They fed me. Clothed me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey struggles to swallow her tea. Evidently her eyes widen or she’s just an open book to him because the corners of Ben’s mouth quirk upwards. He gets up, placing the bowl and cutlery into the washing bowl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wanted to go immediately, but they stopped me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks guilty then. She bites on the temptation to tell him he’s stupid for feeling that way. The Force is what called him and took him away, only to plonk him on an island with angry nuns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben carries on. “They wanted me to wait, so I waited. Meditated for a bit. Explored the island. The porgs kept following me around. I thought I could’ve used Luke’s ship but when I got there—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey looks away from him at this point. There’s just something in his tone that throws into light the path she’s taken to get here and how he’s ended up following her footsteps. Like two pieces of string, their paths have been long and winding and occasionally, got tangled up within themselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Always just a few steps behind,” he murmurs, finishing her thought for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A companionable silence follows. Wordlessly, Ben cups her cheek and brushes the thick pad of his thumb over her skin. She’s been crying since he started speaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” she says softly, with mild surprise. She leans across the table and kisses him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you go?” she whispers, pressing her forehead to his, her right hand caressing the nape of his neck. Her tears come quicker.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry. I took my time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t care that you took your time,” she snaps, wrenching herself from him and turning away. She folds her arms tight over her chest because she feels small and childish, caring about things she shouldn’t care about because he’s here. She hears the scraping of his chair and his footsteps as he comes to stand in front of her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She lifts her head to meet his eyes again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I care that you left,” she admits, biting hard on her bottom lip to stop it trembling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben lifts his hands to brush his fingertips over the planes of her face. Memorising her, studying her as she did him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I saved you,” he says thickly. “And that was enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She glares, but it’s a flash of anger within that doesn’t take.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t told you something,” she says, remembering. “You lied to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shifts his weight, looking down. Sheepish.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rey, when I saw your past, I didn’t know Palpatine was part of it. I thought your parents were strangers, drunks—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Palpatine,” Rey bites on the name, “was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>liar</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He lied to you, Ben. I went back to Jakku, found Plutt. Gave him enough of my credits and promised more to know that whatever he told me about my parents would be the absolute truth. Not words from a power-crazed Emperor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben searches her face, his own features sinking into a frown. As she talks, sorting out the tangles in their story, his eyes darken to the point that she knows, if Palpatine wasn’t already destroyed, he’d go this minute to Exegol and plunge a saber into his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My parents, it turns out—they were just drunks. Nobodies who came to the planet for parts and died in the sands. Plutt even gave me their names, which he had in his books as a record of transaction when they sold me. Beren is my father’s name.” She’d brushed the sand off the pages she took from him—low tech meant no awkward questions, that was Plutt’s philosophy— and there it had been, in Basic, written by the spiky hand of Plutt himself. “No bounty hunter, Imperial or otherwise, ever came looking for them. The memories we saw, together, were constructed by Palpatine. He wanted a new body and for the last Skywalker to die. He used this – thing between us to trap us, Ben.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An awful silence surrounds them, the cottage. The ocean is calmer outside and the wind has died down but Ben’s Force signature thrums with anger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spoon, the bowl, and the dish, drying on the side, lift an inch off the counter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey steps towards him, slips her fingers around his clenched fist. Ben breathes in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spoon, bowl and the dish gently place themselves back on the counter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wordlessly, she leads him out to the oceans she knows so well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The moonlight is sharp and sparkles against the black waters. Turning to Ben, Rey gently reaches up onto tiptoe, her fingertips at his chin. He leans down, one arm winding around her waist to pick her up off the ground. They kiss. It’s a mess of dried tears and fresh, white hot tears born from anger, but she loves him. He loves her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s glorious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey licks her bottom lip as she pulls away, staring out at the water. When she glances at Ben, he evidently has the same thought. He pulls his sweater over his head at the same time she pulls her top over hers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they’re divested of their clothes, Rey introduces him to the mysteriously warm waters of her new home planet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he dives under the water with her, he clutches her hand tight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they break the surface, she laughs with him and swims towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck, playfully kissing the space between his neck and shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It could be minutes, could be hours.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, they break free from the waters. Hand in hand, they walk to the cottage, through the back door. They step into her bedroom. Their bedroom, now. Dizzy and drunk on each other, the Force flowing between them, they run their hands over each other. Touching, caressing, kissing, exploring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He holds her in his arms and sits down on the bed with her arms around his neck. She kisses with teeth, nibbling on his neck, leaving a mark that’ll bruise and prove to her tomorrow morning that he’s really here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He whispers against her gentle sighs that he loves her. Over and over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She runs her fingers through his hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leaves a bite on the inside of her thigh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where shall we go?” she asks, the question caught in a deep-throated moan as he kisses her wet core. He lazily reads her mind to learn what she likes best. Her peak comes suddenly, with a joyous cry. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anywhere,” he says finally, before returning his mouth to her pussy. At her second climax, as she’s twitching from the force of it, the delirious high of it, he moves up her body, lining himself up with her centre. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wraps her legs around the small of his back, sliding her right arm around the width of his shoulders, running her left hand down the muscle of his back as she welcomes him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have the galaxy,” he murmurs against the shell of her. They have the galaxy to wander, to roam, to take joy in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For now though, she will take joy in him and let the stars burst behind her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, when they’re lying in bed, exhausted, Rey will glance down to the end of her— their bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben’s feet do indeed dangle over the edge.</span>
</p>
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